Karim M. Tiro, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania

"When [the Indians] talke amongst themselves of the English ships, and great buildings,
of the plowing of their Fields, and especially of Bookes and Letters, they will end thus:
Manittowock They are Gods: Cummanitoo, you are a God, &c."
-- Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America (1643)

"Being all Stripped as Naked as We were Born, and endeavoring to hide our Nakedness,
these Cannaballs took [our] Books, and tearing out the Leaves would give each of us
a Leaf to cover us; which We took from them: at which time they would deride and smite us;
and instantly another of them would snatch away what the other gave us, smiting and deriding us withal.
-- Jonathan Dickinson, God's Protecting Providence, Man's Surest Help and Defence (1699)

These conflicting, problematic descriptions of early Native encounters with
the written word encourage us to reflect on the role of literacy in the
colonization of North America. For Indians and whites alike, literacy
appears to have been an early marker of cultural difference. Although
Roger Williams was a sympathetic
observer of Indian ways, his passage indicates
above all the contribution that literacy made to Europeans' feelings of
cultural superiority. It is unlikely that the Indians Williams met mistook
the English for gods; rather, they acknowledged that the "Bookes and
Letters" themselves manifested an abundance of manitou, the spiritual power
that suffuses things in varying degrees. The Indians were impressed by
books as works of fine craftsmanship, and by the ability of the leaves to
'speak'. However, Native recognition of manitou was not necessarily a mark
of approbation, because manitou was ambivalent power. It could be creative,
but it could be destructive as well. Their assessment proved to be close to
the mark.

Books played a different role in Jonathan Dickinson's narrative of
his band of shipwrecked Englishmen and women and their slaves in Florida.
Drawing upon already well-established conventions in writing about Indians,
Dickinson described his captors as "vehemently foaming at the Mouth, like
wild Boars"-a description that certainly prevents us from accepting his
account at face value. If at all accurate, however, Dickinson recorded a
less reverential attitude toward the book and its users on the part of the
Natives. Through observation of Spanish missionaries on the Florida coast,
these Indians were probably familiar with the book's symbolic and practical
significance to Europeans.

Europeans made extensive use of the pen and the press in promoting
their colonial enterprises. The literature of colonization accordingly
spanned many genres. Narratives of exploration were crucial to arousing
European interest in America in the first place, and images of Indians as
'savages' in need of 'civilizing' lent legitimacy to their imperial
projects. Emigration tracts recruited thousands from western and central
Europe to settle the so-called 'Virgin Land'. Missionary Bibles,
catechisms, and hymnals were weapons in Europeans' assaults on indigenous
cultural beliefs. Captivity tales such as Dickinson's propagated
representations of Indians that justified-or, more accurately,
demanded-European aggression. And there is perhaps no more enduring symbol
of Native American dispossession than the
Indian treaty. The sheer number
of texts produced is evidence of whites' contemporary concern over their
relations with Indians. At the same time, there can be little doubt that
those texts reflected the prejudices, fantasies, beliefs, and anxieties of
the Europeans who successfully established themselves on Indian
land.

There was no single Native response
to the technology of writing. Some Natives actively sought literacy. The
ability to read and write did not mark their assimilation into
Euro-American society or compromise their identities as Indians. On the
contrary, many Indians who took up writing used it as a resource for
cultural revitalization, resistance, and self-representation. Some Indians
undertook to develop writing systems
for their own languages or to document
oral traditions. Others-from a Cherokee reformer in Georgia to a Pequot
preacher in New England-took up the pen to defend Native rights to land and
self-determination before Euro-American audiences. In so doing, these
Natives forced the dominant culture to acknowledge indigenous perspectives
marginalized by mythic narratives of 'manifest destiny' or 'vanishing
Indians', narratives that continue to exert influence today.

Many Natives self-consciously disdained the written word in favor
of their oral traditions. Indians placed great value upon live testimony
and personal experience. To them, written texts hopelessly lacked the vital
power of the spoken word. For example, while the Seneca chief
Red Jacket
acknowledged the need for a cadre of literate Indians to guard against
fraudulent treaties, he deemed writing a culturally inappropriate medium
for Indian expression. He chided whites for trying to remake Indians in
their own image and mocked what appeared to him to be a central component
of Euro-Americans' sense of superiority. "You say there is but one way to
worship and serve the Great Spirit," he said. "If there is but one
religion; why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all
agreed, as you can all read the book?"